Four-Bet Sizing: Thinking About Postflop Pot-to-Stack Ratios
Covering live poker tournaments for a living affords me the opportunity to see countless thousands of hands played out, many of which offer interesting and potentially valuable insights into how players �� both amateurs and professionals �� play the game. In this ongoing series, I��ll highlight hands I��ve seen at the tournaments I��ve covered and see if we can glean anything useful from them.
Today we��ll again take a little departure from the norm as I critique a hand I played in a recent tournament.
The Scene
I��m playing in Event #1: $565 Casino Employees No-Limit Hold��em at the 2015 World Series of Poker. The event drew 688 players total, a bit down from previous years. The structure has been sped up a bit with 40-minute levels now. While there��s still plenty of play, there��s also a bit more urgency to gather chips than when levels were 60 minutes in the past.
We pick up this hand late in Level 5 (100/200/25). I��m sitting with a stack of roughly 11,500, up from my starting stack of 5,000. My opponent in this hand has approximately 9,400. I have recently been moved to this table, and the only time we clashed was when I opened with jacks under the gun, called a three-bet from this opponent, and check-folded an ace-high flop. He seems to be on the tighter side, while I��ve been opening a fair amount of pots.
The Action
Action folded to me in the hijack, where I opened for 450 with A?K?. My opponent on the button made it 1,200 to go. The blinds got out of the way, and I was ready with a four-bet to 2,950. My opponent flat-called, and we took in a flop of 6?4?2?.
My opponent had roughly one pot-sized bet left, so I shoved all in with my overcards and a backdoor flush draw. He called after thinking briefly with J?J?. I got a friendly turn as the Q? arrived, but no help on the river.
Concept and Analysis
Everything in this hand starts off fairly standard as I make my normal-sized open and get reraised. Having already played a three-bet pot with this player and having a fairly active image myself, I wasn��t surprised to see him come after my open with the three-bet, and I quickly four-bet the ace-king for value to about 2.5 times his raise. I expected this four-bet to put him to an all-in-or-fold decision.
What I didn��t count on was my opponent flatting the four-bet. His decision put me in a very awkward spot as he had a pot-sized bet left and I bricked the flop.
Many players, especially in small-stakes tournaments like this one, will splash around in three-bet and four-bet pots with hands much worse than ace-king. I had a few reasons for shoving at the time.
First, I didn��t want to bet small and give these hands a chance to bluff me. Second, I hoped to put him to a difficult decision for his stack with medium pairs. Third, if he did decide to roll with a medium pair, I wanted to be able to realize my equity against these hands by seeing all five cards.
In retrospect, this is a situation I should have avoided entirely. When faced with a three-bet from this player at the stack sizes given, I had a few options available.
Folding ace-king in this spot is out of the question. I could simply call the raise and play postflop with a good hand, though I would obviously be at a positional disadvantage. Or I could jam or three-bet large enough �� something like 3,800 �� that getting the rest of the money in postflop would become a trivial decision.
The option of three-betting small, which I chose, looks to be the worst of them all, given the pot-to-stack ratio. It��s important to consider stack depth when sizing your four-bets. You have to think about what the pot-to-stack ratio will be postflop, and figure out how playable your hand will be at that point.
Because I failed to do this, I was stuck in a spot with no good options and ended up losing a majority of my stack. When the blinds went up to 150/300/25 shortly after that, I was left with just seven big blinds and busted in short order.
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